Report: Obama taps Geithner to lead fiscal cliff negotiations

11/26/12 12:47 PM EST

The White House is tapping Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to lead negotiations with Congress to avert the looming fiscal cliff, the Wall Street Journal reports:

The move is part of the White House's effort to leave behind the near-catastrophic failure of 2011 talks over raising the debt ceiling. Those negotiations were led by a team, including Jacob Lew, then White House budget chief and now chief of staff, with whom Republicans frequently clashed because they felt Mr. Lew wouldn't agree to major changes to entitlement programs like Medicaid...

...Mr. Geithner, who declined to comment for this story, will be joined by a team of White House budget and tax experts, including Mr. Lew, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, NEC Deputy Director Jason Furman and top congressional-affairs official Rob Nabors.

Geithner has been vocal about wanting to reach a deal during the lame duck session of Congress and has said he doesn't think a temporary fix will be good for the economy. "You leave this huge cloud of uncertainty hanging over the economy. And more importantly, perhaps, you reduce the incentives both sides now have to come together," he told Bloomberg's Al Hunt earlier this month.